Fat Matt, Scary Mary, Messy Jessie…it gets worse. Kids can be heartless.
Luckily, in my case they were just dumb. “Thirsty Kirstie”. Ouch.
It was a dud and one that didn’t last long. Surprising, right? And yet without knowing it, they hit the nail on the head.
I think I have been thirsty most of my life.
The Woman:
I am a 21 year old student with one online class standing between me and graduation from my Christian university. If you are at all familiar with the subculture of Christian colleges or even this age bracket of American Christianity, then you are probably aware that this is the year it happens.
Relationship statuses begin changing on Facebook. Suddenly all the hands raised in class appear to have bright, sparkly rings on them. Save-the-dates explode from the P.O. box. You bump into Amy who you sat by in freshman English or Jessica who lived on your hall last year and they gush to you as if you were best friends. You brace yourself for every.single.detail of how he proposed, fake smile for all ten minutes of the story, then head back to your room... and cry. And cry and cry and cry.
That is, if you are anything like I am…or was…
I have decided to be as naked with you as the current state of
my left ring finger. Feeling like the last single standing can be horrible.
At the beginning of this school year I asked the Lord to reveal
His purpose for the semester. I approached the Bible like a magic eight ball
hoping that if I flipped enough pages I would eventually find the answer I
wanted. Instead, He highlighted verse after verse about finding contentment in
Christ alone.Hmm…
My response went a little like this: “Lord, that’s really nice but not exactly what I was thinking. I don’t know if You’ve noticed but it’s kind of my last semester here in the Mecca of Christian men…so um…maybe You might want to give “him” a little nudge seeing as how time is running out and all.”
His response? “My grace is sufficient for you.”
Then He took my hand and started walking me through the biblical account of Leah.
Oh parallel of parallels…Then He took my hand and started walking me through the biblical account of Leah.
Take a minute to read Genesis 29. This chapter tells the story of a woman characterized by her deep longing. I read Leah’s account and my heart breaks. I feel her pain. I carry her struggle.
A desire to be wanted, chosen, and accepted in the love of
another.
Her deepest longing, her greatest battle. Yes, I believe Leah
was a very thirsty woman.
In my sanctified imagination, I also see the little girl. I
picture Leah playing house with her younger sister Rachel. I envision her
sitting in her mother’s lap begging to hear once again the story of how her
parents met. I see a young woman much like myself gazing out into the distance,
waiting for a love of her own. And He would come.
Just not in the way she had always imagined.
Isn’t that something?
God chose Leah as the blood line from which Christ would one day come.
Isn’t that something?
God chose Leah as the blood line from which Christ would one day come.
Years ago one of my favorite college professors said something
that would forever resonate with me. We were talking about the love of God,
when he said something along these lines…
“Some of you guys think you understand God’s love. And yet, when
a performance or play comes along and you need a date, you never stop to
consider inviting the fat, awkward girl from class. What about asking her?”
I remember there was an eruption of laughter. The professor’s
eyes filled with tears.
“All I know… is I was that fat girl, and Christ asked me out.”
Dead silence. Point made. I still get chills thinking about it.
The Jesus Storybook Bible
describes God’s sentiment toward us as a “Never Stopping, Never Giving Up,
Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.”
God’s love looks beyond my ugliness. His love is bigger than my
brokenness.
It renders my unworthiness irrelevant.
Lavish, excessive, crazy, too much, gushing, extravagant love.
Oh, His love is so fulfilling. Do you believe it?
The Well:
Jeremiah 2:13 “For My people have committed a double evil: They
have abandoned Me, the fountain of living water, and dug cisterns for
themselves, cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.”
Ashamedly, the above verse just about sums up the majority of my
life thus far. I warned you earlier that I have spent far too much time defined
by my thirst. But I have this feeling that I am not the only one. In fact, I’m
sure of it. You met my girl Leah; now take a look with me at my favorite story
in all of Scripture.
John 4 describes the woman commonly known as
the “Samaritan woman” or the “woman at the well.” I was reading through this
chapter yesterday and verse 6 caught my attention in a new way. Jacob’s well!
This exchange had taken place at Jacob’s
well.
And I thought to myself, isn’t it something that, after all the
years separating Leah and this woman, after all the years between the Samaritan
woman and I, we are still drawing
from Jacob?
In a manner that is neither accusatory nor condemning, Jesus speaks
to this woman about her current state of emptiness. He speaks of the
five husbands of her past and compassionately addresses the well she had been
drawing from for so many years.
Take it firsthand from someone who has tried to draw meaning, satisfaction,
and worth outside of Christ…it never
works. I have the scars to prove it. Like Leah and the Samaritan woman, my
broken cistern (or container or bucket) of choice has been relationships. I
have returned again and again to the well of another hoping for a drop of the
fulfillment that never quite seems to last.
Too long I have been disappointed. Too long I have gone thirsty.
Far too long.
Until one day a Man met me at the well. And He was like no other
I have ever known.
The Water:
“Where do you get that
living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob?”
–Samaritan Woman
I am weeping now because I believe that God has been preparing
me for this day for a very long time. This morning a situation straight out of
Genesis 29 took place in my own life. A season ago I would have been completely
devastated over this course of events. It would have thrown me into a wave of
unworthiness, self-loathing, and wreaked bitterness within my family. But see,
it’s all different now.
I have tasted the water.
“Everyone who drinks
of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that
I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him
will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” -Jesus
It was different for Leah too. Like the rest of us, there would
be highs and lows in her struggle to grasp the sufficiency of God. But at the
birth of her fourth son Judah, she finally got a small taste of redemption’s
unfolding love story. In the face of the same circumstances, she was able to
respond “this time I will praise the Lord.”
And through that son Judah, the Messiah finally comes. The One
for whom she had always longed.
And oh, how He loved her. How He loves you.
The Messiah shows up for the Samaritan woman
as well. She was the victim of so much prejudice, she was deemed unworthy of
Jesus’ compassion, and yet He went out of His way to come for this woman. Even
His closest followers were shocked by this. Grace for her? Ridiculous, abundant love for her?
Yes!
And this is the part that really gets me,
okay? This is the verse that touches, convicts, and gives me hope.
v. 28 “the woman left her water jar”
At the end of her exchange with Jesus, the
woman leaves the pitcher from which she had spent her life drawing water. She
takes no thought for it. She doesn’t need it anymore. Wow.
Let me close with a well-known verse I read for the first time from the Amplified Bible.
Psalm 90:14 “O satisfy us with Your mercy and loving-kindness in the morning [now, before we are older], that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
Now before we are older.
I am writing this for myself as I strive to meditate on truth in the midst of trial. I am writing this for every one of us who has wasted time on broken pitchers. But mostly, I am writing this for the next generation of women for whom God has so burdened my heart.
Learn this lesson now. Draw from His well. Let Him satisfy you with the greatest love story you will ever know. Because when you do, like Leah and the Samaritan woman, it will result in the most fulfilling praise of God. You won’t be able to shut up about His love. It will be like a spring welling up inside.
2,000 years ago my Prince
came for me and His name is and always will be Jesus.
By God's grace and after years of longing, I am finally tasting and fully embracing His great love.
And I’m not thirsty anymore.
